why byjus is better than vedantu?

For your information, BYJU's company works on the Business Model of Any Time Access in which students can watch pre-recorded video tutorials at any time. While Vedantu works on WAVE i.e. whiteboard audio-video education . And this model is also liked by many children.

• Byju. Serial CAT Topper & India's No.1 Trainer.
• Pravin. Logical Reasoning & Aptitude Training Expert.
• Winner of the CNBC-TV 18 Crisil Emerging India Award (Education) Winner of Big Research NDTV Profit Business & Service Excellence Award.
• Kunal Mittal. AIR 20, JEE Adv.
• Saksham Jindal.
• Anil Dhameliya.

Choosing the right education solution can be quite a task; one has to compare a lot of data such as plans, pricing, content, language supported, user ratings, features, customer support, etc. before choosing the right kind of program.

Brand Positioning: On one side is the world’s most valuable Edtech start-up BYJU’S, which emphasizes self-learning and usage of technology to make students life-long learners and on the other is a pioneer in live tutoring that aims at providing a virtual yet holistic classroom experience.

BYJU’s recently ventured into the live tutoring space- BYJU’s Classes, which was something that was missing in BYJU’s arsenal thus far.

Courses Available:

BYJU’S offers courses for students across different ages and grades. They provide the following customized educational content.

Vedantu offers content for 6th grade to 12th grade and preparation programs for school boards and competitive exams. The following are the programs available at Vedantu.

Teaching Methodology:

BYJU’S offers a comprehensive learning application that leverages technology to merge proven practices such as the use of videos, engaging content, and quizzes. BYJU’s make use of visually-rich content to establish conceptual clarity and encourage lifelong learning. The learning programs include movies like video and game-like simulations to help students learn effectively.

Vedantu offers 1-on-1 live student-teacher sessions. The technology used by Vedantu is called Whiteboard Audio Video Education or WAVE in short. The platform enables a primary teacher, multiple teacher assistants, and many students to be live at the same time. Vedantu also hosts quizzes, but it is entirely on a live model.

BYJU’S allows the students to learn both online and offline, making it a truly personalized learning platform wherein the student can study at his/her own speed. BYJU’S also hosts a separate doubt resolution platform.

Future Ready Skills:

BYJU’S recently acquired WhiteHat Jr, the leader in the online coding space. WhiteHat Jr. helps kids aged 6 to 14 years build commercial-ready games, animations, and apps online using the fundamentals of coding.

Vedantu freshly launched its new coding program called SUPERCODERS that is available in four levels.

Medium of Instruction

Vedantu hosts learning content primarily in English and Hindi. On the other hand, BYJU’S hosts learning programs in the most prominent regional languages of India including, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, and Bengali.

Who Seems to Have an Edge?

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Byjus is the king of the K12 education market. They have so many users, such a strong salesforce, and they keep acquiring all the competitors. It seems that no startup can compete with Byjus in the K12 market.

Yet, there is a startup which is doing is just that. It's called Vedantu, and last month, it turned into India's 27th unicorn.

On the outside, Byju's and Vedantu look the same: online classes for students.

But look deeper, and you'll see an important difference between them. This difference is the reason why Vedantu is competing so successfully against Byjus. In today's newsletter, I'll tell you:

(I'm sorry I can't give a summary of today's newsletter. You'll have to read it fully if you want to know how Vedantu is silently winning against Byjus)

The story of Vedantu begins in 2006 in a small town in Punjab called Barnala. 4 friends: Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Anand Prakash, and Saurabh Saxena were bored of their jobs. So they started an IIT-JEE coaching called Lakshya Institute.

Of the 35 children they coached, 11 cleared the IIT entrance. Motivated by this success, they decided to help students across the country.

By 2011, Lakshya Institute had expanded to Patiala, Bathinda, Chandigarh, and Panchkula and had 2500+ students and 250 teachers. It was recording solid profits every year. But there was a problem:

The coaching business wasn't scalable.

The 4 friends had big dreams: they wanted to expand Lakshya Institute to the whole country. But opening a coaching center in every city was expensive. Very expensive.

In startup terms, this is called a scalability problem. The best startups are scalable: it doesn't cost much to open them in new locations. Think of Facebook: after it had found success in Harvard, expanding it to more colleges didn't take a lot of money, just extra server costs. Same with Google. After they had found success at Stanford, expanding to silicon valley didn't take a lot of money.

Lakshya Institute wasn't scalable. So they sold Lakshya to Mahesh Tutorials in 2012 and started thinking of how to scale the coaching business.

No need to create suspense here, you already know the solution is online education😂 But remember, at that time, the solution wasn't so obvious. It took these guys 2 years to figure out that online education was the solution.

As Vamsi Krishna told YourStory:

Thus, on October 26, 2014, Vedantu was born.

But the founders hadn't forgotten their experience with Lakshya Institute. They knew that traditional coaching was so effective because it placed a lot of emphasis on the student-teacher bond. Thus, the student-teacher bond became Vedantu's mantra.

All their innovations had a single goal: strengthen this bond.

👉 They used technology to scale and offer online classes to students across the country.

👉 They could offer online classes at cheap prices because they didn't have to waste money on building coaching centers.

👉 In 2019, they introduced a technology called WAVE(Whiteboard Audio Video Environment) to make online classes more interactive and fun for students. WAVE uses AI/ML to evaluate students on 70 factors(like facial expressions, clicks, etc). Teachers can use these insights from WAVE to know if students learned the concepts or if revision is required. Since the launch of WAVE, Vedantu's engagement rate has shot up to more than 90%.

👉 Vedantu offers video sessions that support even low internet bandwidth.

👉 Powerful learning management tools and a holistic training approach for teachers.

👉 Vedantu has partnerships with Airtel and Tata Sky to offer its courses on their respective satellite cable TVs, offers a large library of lessons at no cost to students.

Long story short, Vedantu had hit a sweet spot between maintaining a student-teacher relationship and also scaling up the model by doing one simple thing- taking it online, instead of offline.

After reading about Vedantu, you might think it's very similar to Byju's. I mean they also offer courses for students from classes 4-12 as Vedantu does. What's the difference really?

Turns out, both the models have a fine but important difference

You see, Byju's uses technology to deliver a "personalized learning experience" to every student. What does this mean?

Suppose you are learning class 6th Maths. You'll start watching the videos and answer the quizzes in between the lessons. The app will record the difficulty of the lesson and quiz, how much time you took to answer the questions, your accuracy, etc. Based on these parameters, the app will decide whether to move on to the next topic or review the current topic.

From PCMag:

Notice a key difference? The student has a relationship with the Byjus app, not the teacher. Byjus is essentially replacing the teacher-student interpersonal relationship.

Student-teacher bond: This is what Vedantu got right and Byjus got wrong.

This mistake by Byju's left a door open for Vedantu to swoop in: students want a personal connection with teachers. They don't want to always watch recorded lectures. They like to have a personal touch of the teacher while they are studying, ask doubts as soon as it comes in their mind and get it solved and if they have a problem, get it instantaneously sorted out.

And this, my friends, is the main reason why Vedantu has an edge over Byjus.

If you need proof of Vedantu's successful strategy, just go back to last year's June. On 29th June 2020, Byjus finally recognized Vedantu's brilliant strategy and copied it, and launched live online classes!

Need more proof? Just take a look at Vedantu's growth over the years.

Six months after their launch in 2014, they had 1000 users. During the first month of the pandemic, 1 million users were attending Vedantu's live online classes. This year, they are going to cross 30 million users.

In 2018, they crossed the $1 million revenue milestone.

Next year, they got to $4 million in revenue.

In 2020, they got to $36 million revenue.

This year, they are expecting $200 million revenue!!

Seems like focusing on the student-teacher bond was the right strategy, wasn't it?

This wraps up today’s newsletter. Thanks to Adwait Pisharody for helping me out with the newsletter.

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BYJU’S vs Vedantu Company Comparison: In this article, we will compare India’s two Largest E-learning Platforms BYJU’S and Vedantu.

Speaking of BYJU’S, the company was started in 2011 by Baiju Ravindran of Coonoor and his friends. One of the reasons for the success of BYJU’S is that they focused more on student marketing and at the same time they brought in stars like Shah Rukh Khan for their promotions. That’s why today this company has become a billion-dollar valuation company in a few years.

Speaking of Vedantu, this company was also started in 2011 by four IITians Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena, and Anand Prakash. And he has kept his company name very thoughtfully. ”Vedantu” This word is derived from Sanskrit from which Veda means knowledge and Tantu means to network.

Let me tell you, both these companies started in Bengaluru and today their headquarters is also located in Bengaluru.

Let’s first understand the business model of these two. In the 21st century, children spend the most time with someone after school is TV and smartphones. And parents are also very upset with their children’s use of smartphones but now they can’t do anything about it because their children have gotten used to it and this is what companies like BYJU’S and Vedantu have taken advantage of.

For your information, BYJU’s company works on the Business Model of Any Time Access in which students can watch pre-recorded video tutorials at any time. While Vedantu works on WAVE i.e. whiteboard audio-video education. And this model is also liked by many children. In which students are given an environment like school sitting at home. Students can also ask any questions to teachers in between live online classes.

Today both these companies are making money by selling live sessions and free record tutorials to students.

Speaking of the number of users, In 2022 BYJU’S has 150 million registered students out of which about 10 million students have taken their Paid Plans while Vedantu has around 30 million registered students out of which 1.5 million students have taken their subscriptions.

Speaking of funding, BYJU’s has received $4.5 billion in funding so far. And BYJU’S has so far owned TutorVista, Osmo, WhiteHat, Aakash Educational Services Ltd, and Great Learning Pvt. Ltd. Now this company also expanded outside India.

While Vedantu has so far received US$292.9 million in funding. However, both companies started together. But today BYJU’s company has gone far beyond Vedantu. The user interface of BYJUS’S mobile application and website is quite simple. On the other hand, Vedantu is currently updating its software and it would be the biggest competitor to BYJU’S in upcoming years.

When it comes to market share, according to a report, BYJU’S is number one in India with 40% market share while With 20% market share, Vedantu is at number four after Baijus, topper and unacedemy.

Talking about services, Byju’s offers classes for children from 1st grade to 12th grade. Vedantu offers classes for children from 4th to 12th standard. However, these learning partners have also started coaching entrance exams like IIT-JEE, NEET, and CAT on their platforms.

Just to let you know BYJU’S covers CBSE and ICSE board syllabus along with Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka state boards. Vedanta covers the syllabus of ICSE, CBSE, IGCSE, and Maharashtra State Board.

Talking about the number of employees, 33779 employees work for Byju’s. On the other hand, 5403 employees are working for Vedantu.

Talking about the revenue of both platforms, Byju’s generated revenue of US$421.43 million in 2021 last year and their market valuation is US$22 billion. While Vedantu generated revenue of US$306.38 last year and its market valuation is US$1 Billion.

Friends, although both these applications are very good and students are also very fond of online education these days. But if you want to do your studies from pre-recorded sessions, then Byju will be a good option for you on the other hand if you like to watch live classes, then you can buy Vedantu’s plan.

10. All the Learning in the World at Your Fingertips.  You get access to 50,000+ videos, tests, quizzes, games, interactive lessons, and much more.

9. “Stop Memorising-Start Understanding” The movie-like videos help you visualize and understand each concept.  Once the concept is clearly understood, there is no fear of exams but a love for learning.

8.  Mapped to the Syllabus. Content and learning journey are mapped to your grade & syllabus (CBSE, ICSE, IB, State Boards, etc.)  You will stay in sync with what is happening in your regular classroom.

7. Complete and In-Depth Analysis.  As you finish each module, you take a test and figure out where you stand.  Adaptive and interactive tests will help you master each chapter.  You get to know which concepts you are good at and concepts that need more attention.

6. Adaptive Style of Learning. Your unique learning needs are addressed through just-in-time feedback, resources, and pathways. AI and machine learning used to optimize learning outcomes.

5. Uninterrupted Studies. Your passion might be sports, music, dance, and you might miss classes routinely because of these engagements. Pursue your passion but don’t miss out on your studies.  Embrace the new way of learning. BYJU’s-The Learning App is your portable classroom.  Nothing should interrupt your studies.

4. Disney BYJU’s Early Learn.  A special offering from BYJU’S in collaboration with Disney India. Crafted with love for kids aged between 6-8 years, Disney BYJU’S Early Learn app offers personalized, interactive programs featuring Disney’s timeless stories and characters.  Falling in love with learning just got easier!